Me: *Hiding behind sofa* Uh, h-hello folks. Long time, no see!

*Has shoe thrown at her*

Me: ... Yeah, I had that coming, didn't I?

How he had managed to sleep was a mystery. I mean, he was stuck in a stuffy closet with his younger brother who had his foot jammed into his ear and his friend who appeared to be using Lifty's tail as a cuddle blanket. And to top it all off, a pipe had been dripped foul smelling liquid onto his head all night. ... He really didn't want to think about it.

Shifty opened the door a crack, and saw more or less what he expected.

Mess.

"Clear up on aisle everywhere." He muttered. Aside a calm breeze that pushed things here and there, the place was silent. The door pushed open, and Shifty stepped out. And landed flat o n his face.

"Alas, my dear brother, Shifty, has been cursed with Dead Legs!" Lifty's goofy voice was on top of him, his laugh hitting his Back like tiny arrows. It was true they had the same laugh, but if it was only one using the laugh, it always seemed to be much more annoying.

"Very funny. Help me up, could ya?"

"Yes Shifty, I COULD help you up."

"... WOULD you help me up?"
"Yes Shifty, I WOULD help you up."

"... Well?"
"You didn't say when!"

"Dude, we may or may not have just survived a major apocalypse. Now help me up before I break your fucking legs!

"Oooh, language!" Came Caramel's English voice. Her fur was all over the place, sticking up in odd tufts. She reminded Shifty one of the very few things he'd remembered in school. Albert Einstein.

"Oh screw you guys. And screw you too, gravity, I'm getting up." He would've concentrated on his jelly legs more if he wasn't looking around. He could see the sky. The usual happy blue. He wouldn't have been so freaked out if they hadn't been in the basement.

"Hey look, a plane!"

"Good to know, Caramel. Lucky bastards trying 'ta escape, I'm guessing'."
"If they were trying to escape, they didn't do a very good job." Caramel said with an odd amount of bubbilyness in her voice. "Look, the plane's about six feet to your left." Shifty turned slowly, and stared at his face reflected in the nose of a plane. Shifty felt slightly giddy, Lifty was throwing stones at it, making an annoying clang, and Caramel was running up the remains of the stairs.

"Hey Caramel, get back down here!" Shifty yelled at the girl.

"Sure thing, mum." Caramel jaunted.

"Mum? Don't you mean mom?" Asked Lifty.

"Nope! I'ma letting my British blood bleach your American world. ALL HAIL TEA AND CRUMPETS!" And with that, she reached the surface and ran towards the plane. Shifty guessed it was originally the usual pink, yellow and blue, but was coated in so much ash and debris it was hard to tell.

"... Shifty, what's a crumpet?"

"Search me dude, I have no clue." Truth is he did, but couldn't be bothered to talk about it. He attempted to run up the stairs, but they crumbled like wet chalk under his feet. He swore that girl was a freaking ninja sometimes. After using Lifty as a trampoline, he managed to get out of the basement, which now would be better described as a hole. He saw Caramel's purple ears poking out of the plane. The thing was missing its roof, but a lot of the chairs were still in place. She was using the chairs to climb up the side, and appeared to be trying to reach a yellow fox, wearing a black hat that said USA. He was trying to reach the stairs while clinging onto a rather bashed up blue cooler. He didn't pay much thought to Caramel, but when he saw Shifty, he called out to him.

"Hey buddy? Lend a man a hand? This thing's heavy!" Shifty just walked over to the opening and waited for the HTF to arrive. He half fell through the doorway, and the cooler smashed into his back. Shifty just stood and watched. If the guy asked for help, he'd just say he'd been kept up all night. Which was partly true, because that leaky pipe combined with Lifty's rancid foot oder made that night very comparable to hell.

"Ratchet? Babe, I got the cooler!" As if from nowhere, a blue cat with long, blond hair bobbed up from a pile of rubble. She did a quick sprint towards them, and embraced the fox in a kiss.

"About time, faggot." Her voice wasn't menacing, but Shifty could obviously tell this was the kinda girl you were careful around.

"Well open it up already! And if there's a flask of coffee in there, it's a free for all man. And by free for all, I mean your head will become very similar to that plane if I don't get it." By this time, Caramel had reached the ground again, and Lifty was next to his brother mumbling annoyed words. The cooler had packet sandwiches and lots of water. It also had a packet of crisps, but Shifty wasn't overly keen on Cheese and Onion and Smashed Into A Fine Powder flavour. The cat grabbed a water and sandwich, stood up, then winced in pain.

" Damn my spine to hell! Hi, my name's Ratchet, that's Ricky. Were you in that plane crash?"

"Actually, we were about two metres away from it. I'm Shifty, that's Lifty and the living jackhammer is Caramel."

"Hey, I've heard of you guys!" Piped up Ricky. "I swear the news once said that two green raccoons stole the Mona Lisa. And you, the purple girl, didn't you enter that icecream eating contest against Nutty that one time at the mall?"

"Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that. Man, good times, gooooood tiiiimes!"

"Okay, the introductions are done, let's beat it Ricky. I wanna get outta here before those tripod things show up again. And with my back being the bitch it is, we're gonna need a car or something."

"I could hotwire one for ya!" Everyone turned to Lifty, who was grinning like an idiot.

"Of course, it would have to cost ya..."

"Two bottles of water and a cheese sandwich sound fair to you?"

"No way girly!"

"Two cheese sandwiches?"

"Nope."

"How about- Ew! Ricky, I don't like the turkey sandwiches, gimmi the jam one!"

"Let me have any sandwich with meat, and I'll hotwire anything for ya!"

"Deal." The cat hook the raccoons' paw.

"Oh, you got any sushi in that cooler?" Asked Caramel.

"Uhhh, no. Sorry kid." Ricky said. Ratchet waved and signalled them over to a rather chewed looking car. Lifty cracked hit knuckles, and dove underneath it.

"Sandwich?" Ratchet offered. Shifty unwrapped the cling film and bit into it. Egg and water cress. Not the tastiest thing in the world.

"So, any clue on what's going on?" Shifty asked through a mouth full of sandwich.

"Not sure completely, but we know something." Ratchet said.

"What?"

"You wouldn't get it."

"I don't care, I'm a nosy basterd. Now what is it?"

Ratchet sighed.

"I was saving this for the media, but I guess the media aint exactly gonna help us now." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a camera. She flipped on the screen and it flickered to life. Shifty stopped chewing.

"Wait, I though all electric items weren't working.

"I know, but this is solar powered and seems to still work. I think natural energy is still working. Okay, see here? I shot this from the plane we were on." A shaky video of tripods walking around by the dozens appeared, all firing lasers from identical cannons, puffs of white ashes exploding everywhere.

"I shot this from a small town, so I'm dreading what the big cities look like. Anyway, check this out." She clicked onto another video of a lighting storm, identical to the one Shifty was in.

"Hey, I was in a storm just like that!"

"Did you see the lightning?"

"Yeah, how could I not?"

"No, I mean up close."

"No, I quite like not dying."

"Well, check this out." She put the video into slow motion, and showed the lightning. Shifty didn't blink.

"The lightning, it's-"

"All firing into the same spot, I know. I can't zoom on this thing, but if you look really, really close, you can see that the lightning is broken up into millions of tiny dots, but clumped together so it's hard to see. That wasn't lightning, it something alien. I think the tripods were buried under ground this whole time, and the lightning sent whatever's piloting them through the Earths' crust and into them. And somehow, I don't think they came round for lunch."

"I fixed it!" Lifty crawled out from under the car, covered in black oil.

"The engine might give out now and them, but it's got a good two or three hundred mile left in it."

"Perfect, here's your reward." Ratchet tossed him the sandwich and water and climbed i n the car with the fox. Right before she closed the door, she called out.

"Hey, any of you got a disability or something?"

"My brother's the biggest idiot on Earth. Other than that, no."

"Well in that case, Hasta La Vista, bitches." With that, the car sped off, leaving the three raccoons standing.

"Hey, she gave me the wrong sandwich! THIS IS CHEESE AND LETTUECE YOU BITCH!"